’80s and ’90s Halloween Newspaper Ads!

Ready for some thick Halloween nostalgia? Of course you are. That’s your drug and I’m your dealer. Our relationship is sketchy and has been for years.

Down below: Five spooky newspaper ads from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The “Hannibal Voorhees” Mask!(Walgreens, 1993)

Cheap hockey masks (or “Jason masks”) have arguably been the most ubiquitous costume accessory of the past several decades.

Certain companies may utilize better materials or add goofy gimmicks, but the “standard” mask — a chunk of white plastic with a simple strap — is as easy to find today as it was in the mid ‘80s, when Jason Voorhees was a much fresher face.

Shown here is one of that mask’s famous spinoffs. After The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter became an unlikely star of the Halloween season, thanks chiefly to the restraint mask he wore while trolling Ruth Martin.

Plastic replicas were common, but even more popular was this version, which blended Hannibal’s restraint mask with Jason’s hockey mask to create something familiar but altogether distinct.

The dueling references were lost on me as a kid, but they’re plain as day to see now. Though certainly more popular in the ‘90s, these masks still pop up today.

Classic ’80s Kiddy Costumes!(Kmart, 1988)

Your eyes jumped to ALF, but I’m saving my book-length story about ALF costumes for a future entry. Right now, let’s focus on Mr. Ninja.

If you weren’t a kid in the ‘80s or early ‘90s, you missed the peculiar “ninja costume” fad, which is something I’ve never understood yet personally took part in.

I get that we grew up surrounded by ninja characters in everything from cartoons to movies to video games, but I can’t think of one “classic” ninja popular enough to have inspired such an intense costume craze. Can anyone fill me in?

The mask-and-poncho combo shown above was a thing, sure, but more popular were the ninja costumes made of cloth or polyester or whatever the hell cheap costumes are made from. To us, they were less “costumes” and more outright uniforms. We weren’t so much pretending to be ninjas as actually becoming them.

(I remember one Halloween when nearly every boy in my class dressed like a ninja. We all looked like badly bootlegged Power Rangers.)

Halloween Pumpkin Pails!(McDonald’s, 1987)

I’ve already written about McDonald’s Halloween Pails, but this illustration was just too cute to exclude. If you’ve ever wondered how the pails might work as a tattoos, consider this article a sign from God.

The ad also promoted McDonald’s Halloween gift certificates, which were sold by the book and meant to be handed out to trick-or-treaters. I’ve mentioned them on Dino Drac before, and was shocked to learn that many of you had never even heard of the things. I promise, this was a legit thing that happened, and in fact still happens.

The best trick-or-treat hauls showed serious diversity, and nothing stood out from a pile of chocolate bars and Starburst two-packs quite like a piece of paper with Ronald McDonald’s face on it. The fact that I’d eventually be able to trade it for a fistful of ice cream was just the gravy.

Blockbuster Treat Coupons!(Blockbuster Video, 1990)

Similar to McD’s Halloween gift certificates were these rental coupons from Blockbuster. I don’t remember this promotion ever running in New York, but holy shit does it sound awesome.

Imagine it! You’re a kid, you’re trick-or-treating, and since it’s 1990, you’re wearing a Bart Simpson mask over one of your regular t-shirts — one that’s not quite “Bart orange,” but is nonetheless close enough.

After 40 pieces of caramel this and 30 pieces of strawberry that, somebody gives you a Blockbuster rental coupon. Now you can stretch the magic of Halloween well into November, simply by waiting for the precise right moment to demand a trip to the goddamned video store.

It was like carrying the guarantee of one good afternoon in your pocket, and that was worth 50 times more than any movie rental.

The Who’s Who of 1990!(Child’s World, 1990)

By 1990, I’d graduated from these sorts of kiddie costumes and was more interested in the “mature” stuff, like big black death cloaks and masks made to resemble snake-covered zombie heads.

Even so, the costumes shown above were 1990’s premiere choices, with Bart and the Ninja Turtles being especially popular. Dick Tracy was more of a thing that was supposed to be big but never quite got there… even if the outfits from his movie interested me far more than a Bart head or a Donatello shell.

(On that note, you have heard my Dick Tracy costume story from this older episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast, yes? If you need incentive, it’s super embarrassing.)

Soggy Boglins!(Children’s Palace, 1989)

I love it when toy stores use Halloween as an excuse to treat regular toys as seasonal offerings. It still happens today, but it was much more of a thing in the ‘80s, when there were so many toy lines that screamed “Halloween” whether it was October, January or stupid ass August.

Sometimes, it made sense. For example, all of those Real Ghostbusters “pretend play” toys worked perfectly as costume accessories. In fact, Kenner’s Proton Pack worked so perfectly that I can’t even remember there being an official “costume” version.

Other times, toy stores just moved anything that was even slightly horror-themed up to the front, and left us to fill in the blanks. In this old Children’s Palace circular, you’ll notice that Soggy Boglins were clearly presented as Halloween items, even if Mattel had no such intentions.

It was so much easier to pretend you needed a Soggy Boglin for Halloween and not just because you liked Soggy Boglins when they were in the same aisle as the vinyl capes and blood capsules.

ME: Well Mom here’s all the stuff for my costume! A Jason mask, a convict suit, a plastic knife and of course this Soggy Boglin.

MOM: Okay fine but about that boggy goblin — is that really something Jason wears in the movies?

Yes, I had a Hannibal Voorhees mask. Drizzled fake blood on it too. Kept that one for many years, because Jason never went out of style.

I wore a Where’s Waldo kiddie costume to my 1st grade Halloween party. Now THAT went out of style.

lmtj

A few observations:

1) I didn’t get the ninja thing, either. Sure, it had some appeal with the head cover, but nothing else popped. I always assumed it was either a.) the cheapest all over costume a parent might could afford or b.) most parents were very uptight about their child wearing a “scary” costume such as Jason or Freddy, so the ninja was a balancing act. I grew up in the Bible belt with a bunch of preps. “Ninja” was their thing. Psh! Whatever.

2.) At first glance before I realized what it was, I honestly thought the Dick Tracy costume was meant to be a Michael Jackson “Smooth Criminal” costume. HA!

As far as the ninja thing is concerned, there must have been some sort of mega-release of Bruce Lee films in the 80’s or something because I remember my friends in 6th grade being OBSESSED with mail-order catalogs for throwing stars and nunchucks. I even remember creating star-like weapons out of plastic bread ties (you’d snap off one half, clip the remainder to your finger, and flick it at someone). Few kids had parents that would actually permit ordering from such catalogs, but if you succeeded in acquiring these actual “ninja” weapons, you shot immediately to the top of the kid heap.

Of course, it was never enough: even if you had actual, lethal throwing stars, you still pined for a real samurai sword. Or that “Rambo knife” with the survival tools in the handle.

Is that Who’s Who of 1990 ad, perchance, from “Child World”? That was THE toy store in New England before Toys R Us came along and obliterated it. Just look at this place:

That Bart costume cracks me up! Something about the mask’s expression is sooo not right. He’s just too friendly and eager or something… like he’s been re-imagined as a kindergarten teacher. Not really the image you want for a Halloween costume. At least the smock has the real Bart.

The picture of the expensive TMNT costume doesn’t do it any favors either. It’s like the kid’s trying to wear mom’s biggest leatherette purse and thinks the mask will help him get away with the look.

Homer

I know the Ninja costume for us was a poor issue. Us military kids could wear our parents old uniforms and be the ever so generic Soldier, or grab black sweatpants, black sweatshirt, and a long sleeve black shirt for the hood and become lethal silent killers.

Tracy Palma

Those McDonald’s certificates were like gold. Only the ones I remember were for free French fries. Getting 3 or 4 of those things on Halloween was awesome. My sister and I would spread them out over time so we could still get free French fries like, right before Thanksgiving. They were so much better than getting a box of raisins or a Charleston Chew. Or random handfulls of loose change. Was I the only person this ever happened to? I’d dump out my candy at the end of the night and have like, 13 cents at the bottom of my bag. So weird.

Doctor_Who

I got the Blockbuster coupons a few times – you’re right, they were like a golden ticket to a great time. Especially since I was able to convince my little brother that since these were Halloween coupons, they should only be used for scary movies.

My brother hated horror movies, but couldn’t argue with logic that airtight. As long as I helped him pick out something that wasn’t TOO scary, like Gremlins or The Witches, I could both double my holiday appropriate movie intake AND avoid a 575th rental of 3 Ninjas!

Doctor_Who

We got change too. This one neighbor would always give out pennies. But like a ton of them; we’d be encouraged to grab a double handful from the bowl.

Technically it was a good treat, since it was enough to buy a full sized candy bar or two, but it was always disappointing to realize that the reason your bag felt so heavy was because it was loaded down with pennies.

starwenn

My mom always made our costumes, but I do remember when those plastic ones were popular. (Considering K-Mart was one of the few places we had to shop in the 80’s and early 90’s, I may even have seen that very ad as a child.)

We did get McDonald’s gift certificates in our trick or treat bags from time to time. (Not pails – the McBoo pails were strictly used for either holding things like crayons or as Halloween decorations.) Definitely didn’t know about Blockbuster’s. To my knowledge, Blockbuster wouldn’t make it to South Jersey until the early 2000’s. I only saw one during the 80’s, and it was when I was visiting my biological dad and stepmother in Florida.

I really didn’t get the ninja thing. I do remember when it was huge and half the guys in class did it. Maybe because it’s simple? Buy black pajamas and a mask, and you have a costume. Or maybe it was chop-socky late 80’s action films like “American Ninja.”

Working in a grocery store, I’m fascinated by the changes in the candy packaging over the years. 3 Musketteers in particular looks really different.

(By the way, has anyone else seen the M&M single packs with vintage character designs on them? It’s part of their 75th anniversary. I saw them while shelving items today at work.)

Pirate John

The one year I got to dress as a Ninja Turtle, I faced the dual Halloween buzzkills of being sick and there being an infamously terrible storm plaguing my area. I had to content myself with wearing the costume and handing out candy to the few (and damp) trick-or-treaters we got at my house. You can bet that I took every opportunity to roleplay Raphael for some time after that, though.

Regarding ninjas in general, I don’t think there was one specific iconic ninja that inspired the costumes. I’ve seen a lot of 80s ninja movies, but nothing stands out as a trendsetter like, say, Twilight for the vampire resurgence in the mid-to-late 00s, or POTC for pirates in the same time period. I think it was just the overall glut of ninja-themed works in the pop culture of the 80s that made them so hot. The martial arts movie boom of the 70s gave rise to ninja cinema (“ninjema?”), which trickled down to TV shows, comics, video games, toys, etc. From TMNT to Ninja Gaiden to Shinobi, to even obscure stuff like “The Master” starring Lee Van Cleef and Sho Kosugi, it was just too cool to ignore, so everyone capitalized on it.

amrothery

I can think of two reasons why ninjas were popular with the youngfolk in the eighties: Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.

Chris

Am I the only one scared double cheeseburgers at McDonald’s have only gone up a penny in 29 years?

Corinne Lee Lagonigro

They clearly kept the cost down by making the burgers out of less and less actual meat.

Love the nuggets, love the fries, love the filet o’ fish, love the breakfast…haven’t eaten a burger there in fifteen years. Started to find gristle flecks every time. After the fourth or fifth time of biting into something questionable and throwing the burger in the trash I just decided to stop eating them.

Corinne Lee Lagonigro

Yes. I have them, however, I would have stockpiled them for all eternity if they included the tan ones instead of the blue. Fuck blue m&m’s. I voted for purple anyway.

This is exactly what I was going to write. Nothing intrigued more as a child than a strong silent hero dressed in all black.

Ed Dougherty

I read something recently that kind of explained the ninja craze…but I have completely forgotten it! I think it was the combination of ninjas appearing in a Bond film (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) and then Bruce Lee catapulting martial arts in general to new heights. Combined with that companies like Cannon and such who had to fill theaters/drive ins with product and ninjas were a cheap device.

But this reminds me of a random story. My old roommate was/is a porn director. He once said to me, quite seriously, “do you know what my greatest artistic ambition is?” I said, no. He said “to make a great softcore movie, like the RED SHOE DIARIES.” HA!

So anyway for years he was trying to make a softcore movie but he could never come up with an idea. I’d try to help him but for some reason I really struggled to come up with a good concept as well. We had this apartment in Hollywood that was just insane. It started out pretty normal and we were living with friends but then over the years it just became crazy, as we had to continually turn to craigslist to fill vacancies (it was huge, 2500 sq ft..the biggest apartment I’ve ever seen, though dilapidated and we got robbed once). One day I said “this place is like a fucking hostel now”. He said “that’s it! HOLLYWOOD HOSTEL!”

I’d help him with the story whenever he got me stoned enough to start riffing. Well who am I kidding, I totally wrote the movie, it’s on some on demand services now under a different title I think. It actually has some funny lines, though the plot is what you would expect from a high guy writing one scene once a month as he’s passing through the living room. Never has there been a 65 minute movie with more inexplicable twists than this one.

Wait but my whole point in all of this is that the villain is killed in the end with a shuriken. So we had all these real shuriken around the apt. We used to throw them into the wall. They would really SLAM in there, and we must have put like 500 holes in the wall. Finally one day the neighbor comes by. He was like “what is the sound that sounds like a hammer slamming into the wall that happens like every day?” It turns out he was a sound editor and had really been struggling for months with all these shuriken slamming into the drywall. Anyway he was pretty cool about it and took some throws himself.

Steve H

Child World and Children’s Palace were the same chain, originally owned by Cole’s, the company that owned the ‘spare key maker’ kiosk that used to be a staple of EVERY Sears in the US of A.

I was a warehouse manager of one at the end of the ’80s, I was there when the chain died a horrible, screaming death. I have stories, many stories of joy and horror.

… Yes, I wore the Peter Panda costume for special events.

Stories… 🙂

Bart Crowe

I don’t think the real Radioactive Man wears a plastic smock with a picture of himself on it.

pikachulover

I do remember ninjas becoming popular again after the 1st Power Rangers movie. Ninjas are still popular I remember my kid neighbor saying he was going to be a ninja last year.

I did the toy sneak too with a stuffed black cat. I said it made the witch costume I had look better.

Man, I love those Halloween pails. I actually went to a Goodwill recently and scored a bunch of McBoo’s. I know I didn’t have to buy 5 of the same exact pails, but then again why wouldn’t I buy them? I feel like I’m going to be buried alive with all of the unnecessary yet NECESSARY stuff that I have accumulated over the years and will continue to accumulate in the future. At least I hope I’m famous and on Hoarders eventually for being the most organized hoarder yet have each room filled to the brim with stuff that I’ve collected over the years. #goals

I never had a mask last through the night. I think I did three of those characters. I know I did ALF and Super Man (I’m surprised mom let me get away with that) and I want to say one other one but I don’t remember what it was. I know the Alf one made it through most of the night but the Super Man one was toast after like only a block or two.

For the life of me, I’ll never understand why so much Simpsons merchandise had Bart in blue instead of red, as on the show — the only genuine, constant error that I can recall throughout pretty much all of it, except LJN of all companies got it right in their games. Well, the first few — even they screwed it up later.

I remember going through a few of those smock/mask deals as a kid. He-Man, Lion-O, and Metroplex are the ones I remember, though I did buy a Garfield mask from one some time later for my collection. (And don’t think I didn’t see those two Garfield plush there.)

Hm, “Soggy Boglins”? I’ve heard Jim Sterling extol the virtues of Boglins on his show many times now, but I don’t remember the “soggy” part. Is there a difference, or is this like when people call the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just “Ninja Turtles” for short?

dwite fry

re: the final conversation
I’ve done this, and it worked, should I feel ashamed?

dwite fry

Nah it’s more like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Cyber Samurai or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Military or whathaveyou, they were a sub-line of water themed Boglins (three I think, Slobster, Snish and another one), two had water-based action features, Slobster just had an awesome plastic claw and looked a bit like a crustacean.

I love how official Garfield plush toys always look like they might be bootleg toy. That devil one was probably for Valentines Day too.

Vincent Lorre

SAM. Where have you been? There’s been like six DinoDrac articles you’ve abstained from commenting in. When Sammy Hain isn’t the absolute first person to comment on a Ghostbusters meal at a burger joint, it worries people! Glad to see you still exist. I’ll assume you were busy counting lottery winnings and then vacationing with Elvira.

Christian

The 80’s line up of Halloween costumes doesn’t stand a chance against the 90’s juggernaut team up of TMNT, Bart Simpson, and Dick Tracy.

(I actually switched it to “Bart red” in fear that you might be the only person who knew what I meant by blue!)

I remember the Metroplex costume and still can’t believe he had one. I mean, it’s awesome that he did, but of all the characters…

As for Soggy Boglins: Traditional Boglins were kind of like little swampy goblins. Soggy Boglins were all outright amphibious. The two are not interchangeable, though you could just call a Soggy Boglin “a Boglin” and that’d be fine.

No way. It was rite of passage. I even used to pull the trick when costume shopping at pharmacies. Usually it was to score an extra Halloween accessory that I just wanted for assorted, strange purposes — like maybe a battery-operated lantern or some kind of plastic jungle necklace.

Given how huge the TMNT craze was, I’m surprised that there weren’t any “top shelf” kiddie costumes available. I know there were some really good masks out there, but IIRC, just masks, and it’s not like you were gonna find them at TRU or a pharmacy.

RyanG

The Dick Tracy costume story was great, but it doesn’t beat the Joker costume story. I couldn’t stop laughing at that one!

I am pretty sure I had one of the Voornibal masks – I’m certain I had one of those not-Jason masks at all, but I definitely have memories of the particular feel of the cheap, pliable plastic over the mouth hole. I’m also pretty sure I was vaguely frightened of the mask just because it had a connection to horror movies, which were possibly the ultimate taboo of my childhood.

Love these posts! I remember Sunday mornings stealing the ad sections from the AJC and looking for all the new Halloween offers coming out. That thrill amped up after because of Christmas.
Very excited about the ALF post coming. The XE article about your ALF costume was one of my favorites. A collapsible cup prize!

Brew Berry

The smocks always bugged me as a kid. Why would anyone wear a shirt with their own picture and name on it? I guess it’s because the costume makers assumed (correctly) that it was impossible to decipher who most of their masks were supposed to be, so they had to include a nametag and an artist’s depiction of who the mask was failing to represent. Looking back on it through nostalgia-tinted lenses, that’s now become my favorite thing about those costumes.

Maybe for this Halloween, I’ll wear a generic plastic mask and a smock with my own name and face on it, and see how many people get the joke.

Brew Berry

My favorite of the cheap knockoff Jason masks are the ones all painted up with tribal designs. I like to think Jason wanted to dress up for Halloween, and not realizing his regular work uniform was already an acceptable costume, he decorated his mask with markers so he could go as a Luchadore.

And now I’m wondering what the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Bride of Frankenstein would dress up as. Something that scares monsters, I’d imagine, like the Creature could dress as Van Helsing and the Bride could be an exorcist.

Brew Berry

Yup, the price of meat bounces up and down every year, but the price of wood pulp stays pretty consistent. I keep waiting for McDs or BK to introduce the “Excelsior burger” just to see how long it takes people to catch on.

HeathenPierce

Ah, I remember my superman smock and mask. The mask was so drab that my mom for some reason thought that adding a lite shade of lipstick to it would liven it up…it didn’t. In fact I’m pretty sure it was the scariest mask I’ve ever worn. Worse than that, my smock ripped in about 2 minutes of me wearing it. Still, I’m pretty sure I at least came off as a scarrier version of Bizarro Superman, so I was still “in season”.

tbone2278

Regarding the ninja craze of the 1980s, as far as I can recall the two most iconic ninjas of my childhood were Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe. I think their creation was more of a result of the already existing ninja craze than the cause of it though.

Whalley Range

I never saw a Children’s Palace and I think I actually remember Child World from before Peter Panda, or at least before the new font and graphics and his prominence. When Toys R Us showed up, I always preferred Child World. There was something less corporate about it or something. More variety and a bit more ramshackle of an approach. My closest one was in Salem, NH. Am I right that Toys R Us killed Child World? And did you have to wear roller skates when in costume?!?!

Jingo

I can just imagine a parent dragging their begging kid out to trick-or-treat on a rainy night, only to have them get sick. The parents would blame them for wanting to go trick-or-treating in the rain, and not the Typhoid Mary Raphael passing out candy.

Deb Wilson

Both my brother and my sister had the glow-in-the-dark “Hannibal Voorhees” masks. Theirs came packaged with plastic hatchets. We got a lot of costume mileage out of those masks. I think every kid who owned them did.
The plastic smock and mask combination was the bane of my existence. The masks were just too claustrophobic for me. I hated the feeling of the rather sharp edges of the plastic touching my skin. I hated how condensation from my breath would build up behind the mask, and I would end up pulling it up every five seconds to air it out. I hated how my peripheral vision was limited. Don’t even get me started on the smell of vinyl or having your smock rip when you’re climbing the steps to someone’s front porch.

Modok

^ This is a fine example of why one should never skip over the comments in these threads.

Deb Wilson

He would on Halloween.

When I saw the Bart Simpson costume, that quote immediately entered my mind. Funny to see it here.

Corinne Lee Lagonigro

HAHAHAHAHA! You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know what that is…Burger King could take the name and run with it way farther than Mickey D’s.

Jingo

With a few I had, I remember the edge of the socket being razor-sharp and digging into my cheek the whole night.

burningtoys

That Alf, Tweety and Ninja picture has some serious under tones to it. I know these are children we are talking about but that hand placement implies something I’m not willing to comprehend.

Heh, it does make me wonder now how much of your readership (or just Simpsons fans in general) are even aware they used to put Bart in blue for some reason (I could easily see the costume using blue and someone just following that). Or how many people even noticed to begin with? It always seemed to be shrugged off when I was younger, but it drove me nuts. It was like making Garfield green or Mario wear purple instead of red.

As for Metroplex, he was the “big” toy that year, wasn’t he? I’m more surprised that, as far as I know, Fortress Maximus never got one. Or Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime, come to think of it. I think Ultra Magnus and maybe Superion had them, though.

And thanks for the Boglin clarification. Now I feel like I’ll be a step ahead when and if Jim ever gets to those. =)

It definitely was a result. Random aside, I had a professor in film school named Ron Friedman, he wrote the transformers movie and the GI Joe movie. One time he was mentioning these Dumas characters that were twins who could feel the others’ pain. I was like “hey, sounds like those GI Joe guys”, he said “Tomax and Xamot, I created them!” He also created the Bionic Six.

circe154

I never got coupons for Halloween, but Frisch’s Big Boy sold books of valentines that doubled as coupons and I’d get at least one every year.

circe154

Most fans have probably noticed it, they’ve even mentioned it on the show before.

circe154

I think ninja are an eternal trend, there’s always at least one popular cartoon that features them, an even if there weren’t it’s a goto character for little kids.

Tyler Ham

I think one of the kids in that old Halloween photo you bought a while back (where a few are Jason) had the Hannibal Jason mask on!

The episode with the prison rodeo. Homer waves Lisa at a bull, the bull charges him, so he grabs Bart and waves him at the bull, making it madder. He asks Bart why he wasn’t wearing his blue shirt. Bart says he doesn’t own a blue shirt.

Jim Sue

If I remember correctly he wroe blue in one of his original I swear I saw a old 1980 drawing on google image of him in blue

circe154

Most likely. The first wave of merchandise for anything is always based on production artwork and not the final product. But that doesn’t explain why it continued past 1992.

Joe Hasson

Everyone, at one point or another, owned that Hannibal Jason mask. It was like some weird Halloween rite of passage.

Madra Rua

Ok, I wasn’t completely ripped off then! And looking at the prices on those costumes in the Kmart ad, I can see why my mom thought that was the best costume for me that year, haha.

pikachulover

I was thinking of doing something like this too, but with a well known character.

Jason Glor

I didn’t realize they still made costumes with a straight-up picture of the character on them in the 90s. I thought those things died in the 70s.
To paraphrase:
“I don’t think the real Bart Simpson wears a plastic smock with a picture of himself on it”
“He would on Halloween”

Teddy Ray

I never found any gristle or anything questionable in any burger from McDonald’s, but I haven’t eaten one in years because I simply got to the point where I just didn’t like them. Like you said, I love their nuggets (heck, I even like their McChicken sandwich), fries, and breakfast (their filet o’ fish is okay…I wouldn’t say I’m lovin’ it, though), but I will not eat a McDonald’s hamburger.

tbone2278

So your college professor actually wrote Optimus Prime’s death scene. Something that had a profound effect on many a child back on the 80s.

Teddy Ray

I wish they would bring back those old pails, too, but I doubt it will happen. They would never risk a promotion that isn’t plastered with whatever the hot property for kids at the moment all over it.

PoopCulture

I think pirates are another eternal trend.

Teddy Ray

I didn’t notice it at first, but you’re right. I’m pretty sure “ALF” and that “ninja” are just really short adult men who are about to abduct that little girl.

pikachulover

I remember I won a devil Garfield at Knott’s Berry Farm at the Haunt he could have also been a Valentines plush.

Hah, that’s awesome, but I never saw it. I wonder if that was Homer just being Homer, or an actual reference to that early merch. Something tells me it’s the former, but I choose to believe in the latter. 😉

AdamX

I did, I went one year as ghetto jason with a yellow flannel shirt and a pitchfork because the store didn’t have anyone plastic machetes etc. I think that was the last year I ever did mask before switching to straight up face paint.

Jingo

It has Last Supper levels of intrigue. Note how Tweety Bird and the ninja seem close, almost too close. This arrangement is not mutual, and ALF might be behind it. And what are the implications of Tweety Bird’s right arm? Conspiracy? Revenge? Murder?

Teddy Ray

That sounds more like farmer Jason than ghetto Jason. 🙂

The_Stig

As someone who used to wear those awful cheap shit plastic costumes trick-or-treating, I believe it should be legal to bully any kid wearing them without fear of parental reprisal.

Teddy Ray

I don’t know why, but the fact that a girl is wearing the Hannibal Voorhees mask is scarier to me than if a man was wearing it.

There’s something disturbing about the ALF, Tweety, and ninja picture, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I’m pretty sure I never got any coupons when I went trick or treating. In fact, aside from that one elderly lady that gave me a baggie of potato chips that one time, I think I only got candy when I trick or treating. Also, I’ve never really wanted a tattoo, but now I want a tattoo of those Pumpkin Pails.

It took me a while to realize that one kid behind Bart in the 90s picture was a Ninja Turtle. I guess it’s because it’s so dark, but he looked like a cat burglar cockroach at first glance.

I’m glad to see this feature return. There’s some good stuff in old newspaper clippings.

Steve H

Oh, what killed Children’s Palace/Child World… Well, in your city it may well have been TrU, but overall, t’was Cole National deciding they no longer wanted to own toy stores that led to the horrible, horrible death of the chain.

Think of it. CP/CW was the number 2 toy retailer in the U.S., biting at the heels of Toys R Us. Then Coles spins off the company to survive on its own, key management gets golden parachutes, the people remaining make very very VERY bad decisions and zap, dead and gone.

The final blow: They needed a hit, some way to make lots of money. All the toy makers had stopped credit so new stock wasn’t coming in. I recall the time we got in ONE case of Toy Biz ‘Super Powers’ figures and I wondered how that miracle happened.

SO the buyer, or one of the buyers, decided to take ALL the ‘open to buy’ money the company had, EVERY SINGLE PENNY. And buy… wait for it… generic baby dolls made in China.

CONTAINERS FULL of generic baby dolls. They crappy kind no kid buys on purpose but a grandparent might, having no understanding that little Suzy wanted Ooopsie Baby or a Cabbage Patch Doll or you know, something seen on TV.

CP/CW aisles were generally 40 feet long by 15 feet high. Every store, ALL the stores had to re-work a COMPLETE AISLE, both sides, for the generic baby dolls. White, Black, Brown, boy and girl, life-sized and pocket sized. 40 linear (actually, 80 with both sides) feet.

This was going to SAVE the company which had gone into Chapter 11 protection. SAVE it. See, there was a 400% markup on the baby dolls. We could have a big 50% off sale and still make a FORTUNE.

3 months later the chain was dead. It was my understanding that the buyer who made this terrible call went on to a similar position at Circus World.

How’s that? Scary enough? It’s all true. 🙂

Roller skates. No, I never wore roller skates in the Peter Panda costume. wearing glasses I could barely SEE out of the big fiberglas head, due to sweat and heat fogging my glasses. I eventually gave up wearing my glasses in the costume which made me effectively blind. That sucker was time consuming to put on, let me tell you. My managers thought it was a huge joke that I agreed to wear the thing but hey, I did it better than any of them could. 🙂

Corinne Lee Lagonigro

Yeah. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m that person who can’t eat something anymore once I find something off with it. And I mean ever again.

Whalley Range

Those baby dolls probably ended up as prizes at some second rate amusement park somewhere. What a sad end to a great store. I mean, sure, maybe we don’t need every Caldor and Zayre and Ames and Almays and Service Merchandise and Rich’s and Bradlee’s and the many other stores that have gone to the great strip mall in the sky, but a little variety is a good thing.

AdamX

Shame I didn’t fully know what Motel Hell was back then, could’ve gotten a pigs head mask instead.

Terry

I actually read this earlier today and should have commented but didn’t. As far as the ninja craze goes you are spot on with your observations on its genesis. Basically if you had a halfway competently made ninja film to sell in the early to mid 80s, you had a buyer. There is a reason why I can still remember the name Michael Dudikoff off the top of my head with only a self-affirming google search to double-check the spelling.

The rest of your story, which is admittedly the far more interesting part, makes me realize I had boring friends in my 20s.

Jim Sue

ya I can’t explain that ether and always thought it was odd

Steve H

Turnstyle. Yankees. Atlantic Mills. Best.

National, regional and local chains. Every one of them with toy departments. Every one with a need for product to fill shelves.

All that variety, all those options, fueled those amazing toys we grew up loving.

Of course then I go into my ‘old person rant’ about all the toy makers that have gone away, the imagination and creativity and cheap-ass crap and brilliant ideas. Topper. Ideal. Remco. Coleco. Kenner. on and on.

(yes, I know. Toys R Us absorbed KB. Hasbro absorbed Kenner, I think Mattel took over Coleco. Not the same)

*sigh*

baronterror

MOM: Okay fine but about that boggy goblin — is that really something Jason wears in the movies?

ME: Soggy Boglin. And yeah he’s never without it.

Holy crap is that worth price of admission by it’self. Just wonderfully great to see/read this article sir. I remember around this time is when I’d start going through all the papers to be sure I looked at absolutely every single halloween thing or add there was. I’d snip them out, or take out the part of the add, etc, and read through them at my leisure. Keep them until next week’s sunday paper, or after I cut out any pictures that I wanted to keep “in case I got a cork board”. Hehe…of course it didnt occur to me I could ask for a cork board until a few years later when my sister asked for one and I demanded to get one too.

By then the halloween add stuff was gone but I started clipping out horror movie adds and anything with a skull or skeleton on it (including all my health class papers)

Still wish I could have seen what a madman I would have looked like with adds from Halloween on a board in my room in highschool from six years before.

KnightOfCups

The “deluxe” Turtles costume gives me weird, happy flashbacks.

For a stretch, as I rounded out my Trick-or-Treat years, my dad made all of the costumes for my brother and I (until that point, we always went the smock route). And in 87 or 88 (right after they first got popular), he made us both Ninja Turtle costumes that were very, very similar to that design – a two-part shell, made of papier mache and chicken wire, a green cloth hood, and red masks and wraps. *Nobody* knew what we were supposed to be (explanations only brought blank stares), but they insisted on giving dad candy for it anyway.

I have insanely happy memories of the McBoo pails. Sometimes my mom or dad would stop at McDonald’s on the way home from work and pick up supper. One Halloween I had the flu,and my dad brought me THREE HAPPY MEALS IN ALL THREE PAILS.

Yeah, it’s the “sameness” that gets kind of depressing. I’m sure there are political and financial reasons behind it all that I don’t understand, but it was cool to have a choice between stores. Like when Blockbuster came along, I had no problem with them, except that they put my two favorite local video chains out of business. Sad. I used to do a lot of driving down the I-95 corridor from New England to North Carolina and, every so often, you’d see a plaza off the highway — Lowe’s, Michael’s, Old Navy, DSW, Wal-Mart. Sometimes switch one of those out for a Dick’s Sporting Goods. Point is: everyone had to shop at the same place. Homogenisation makes life pretty boring.

Teddy Ray

I have a class picture of my seventh grade class and there is SO much poofy hair. The big hair in the 80s is what killed the ozone layer.

dwite fry

ha, thanks. I wouldn’t consider plastic lanterns part of it though, I mean conning them out of an adult, sorry having one of them to compliment your outfit at Halloween was accepted right? I was Spawn one year and I still managed to convince my nan that i needed a skeleton head plastic lantern 😀

Being a traditionalist, I always preferred the McPunk’n pail, and I know McBoo is Matt’s favorite, but I have to admit, that McGoblin pail is the scariest of the three. He’s the one that looks like he’s up to no good.

Milhouse: Check it out Lisa, I’m Radioactive Man!
Lisa: I don’t think the real Radioactive Man wears a plastic smock with a picture of himself on it.
Milhouse: He would on Halloween.

Sixteen years ago The Simpsons had already gotten pretty terrible, but there were still gems like that – sometimes, you just get hit right in the 1988s. On Dino Drac, you get the gems without the suffering – the Soggy Boglin conversation (and awesomeness thereof) has already been referenced in this thread.

Long after the sun goes nova, alien schoolchildren on a field trip to the blasted ruins of Earth will get to do an interactive learning activity where they’ll get to take a *real* Earthling artifact home to their mothership at the end. The luckiest ones will find a McDonalds Halloween Pail, inspiring the closest emotional analogue possible to envy (if applicable) in all their classmates who got a toothpaste tube or half a superball. Also, someone will misuse “light year” as a measurement of time rather than distance and not be called on it, because I have fair-to-poor quality cartoons on endless loop in my brain.

Likewise, I replied to the first thread before I saw this. Hard to believe at that point The Simpsons had already been on the air for more than a decade and episodes started to suck at a rate greater than 50%.

“Especially since I was able to convince my little brother that since
these were Halloween coupons, they should only be used for scary movies. My brother hated horror movies, but couldn’t argue with logic that airtight.”

As someone who once made his little sister miss an entire morning of cottage fun by convincing her that hummingbirds were “Superbees”, I doff my cap to thee. Well played.

Oh yes, especially since I experienced the “slo-w-w-ly trucked to every elderly relative’s” style of trick or treating, to the point where I had no interest in the process by the age I could have done it for reals. Explaining what you’re dressed as three times per stop, homemade treats as trustworthy as they were a massive letdown compared to candy, and a chaser of pennies and Kerr’s Molasses Kisses.

Homestar: Oh. A handful of change. I guess I can use this go, um, buy some candy. So… thank you for adding a step to my Halloween process!

Derek

yes, because someone will ask what he is supposed to be, I’m sure.

Derek

That’s really great. Thanks for sharing.

Derek

Yes. “Halloween /accessories/, Mom.”

Derek

yeah, surprised it hasn’t come back around yet even if they charge for the buckets separate. I’m eagerly awaiting this year’s possible theme.

Derek

And Hobos.

Derek

After the fact, a Blockbuster coupon would be great but getting it, I’m sure I felt ripped off. Or the McDonald’s coupons.
We rented 3 Ninjas a lot too.

Derek

Thanks for sharing. I recall going to Child’s World. Also, I had that VHS they gave out with the commercials on it and watched it all the time. I can still sing the song from the ad xD
I used to work at TRU so I feel your pain.